Thursday, July 5, 2018
Tested faith
James 1:2-4
My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
A friend of mine called me yesterday and brought tears to my eyes, and I don’t cry easily. Her husband of many years is extremely unwell. A man with a fine mind and quick wit has lost his mind to a debilitating disease. Now, his body is following his mind. She has to do everything for him, feed him, bath him, and try to get him to the bathroom in quick time if he is able to indicate that he needs to go. At times, while caring for him personally, he looks at her with no recognition of who she is. It breaks her heart.
Yesterday she said to me that “my Christianity has been tested and I don’t know what faith I have left.” In situations of extreme distress, like this is, it often seems that words have no meaning and cannot really help. But I said to her that “untested faith is no faith at all.”
The life of a Christian is a test of faith. There is so much feel-good, health and wealth preaching going on that some of us, for a while at least, forget that there is a testing of our faith for our perfecting that comes in our various life situations.
I sat last night with a young couple to talk about a few situations, and we got to talking about their daughter, a feisty two-year-old who wants to challenge the world. I remember the day she was born. It was a day filled with joy for them and their families. They were young, they were committed to each other, they had chosen the right path. But for a few hours that day, there were problems with the delivery, and as a last resort, the doctors decided on an emergency c-section. The young husband panicked. He called me, and I rushed to the hospital so that we could pray. Her birth came with a testing of his faith.
A few years ago, a young lady collapsed on the floor of the office at church during a counselling session. She was overcome with grief over her husband’s conduct and she was trusting God for a change, but nothing was changing as far as she could tell. I dared to tell her something that I had read in a book extract some time ago. Words to the effect that God didn’t design marriage for your happiness but for your holiness. The idea is that God is using your marriage to perfect your holiness and sometimes we get happiness as well. Sounds like a crazy idea but it kept me going during difficulties in marriage. (Please don’t take this to mean that I am advocating that everyone in a bad marriage should just stay – that’s a conversation for a different time.)
Just last month in Georgetown many persons stood outside of a burning building watching in horror as the home of a pastor was being ravaged by fire. It was a Sunday afternoon and the pastor had been in church that morning and had spoken about various things including faith in God even if you lost everything.
This was not intended to be a catalogue of the stories of faith that I know, but the writer to the Hebrews does take this approach to help us to faith. He gives a long list of persons and their experience of faith in God through difficult circumstances.
He started with Abel and worked his ways down through Abraham, Moses and others and then wrote “And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again.” Hebrews 11:32-34.
On this matter of women receiving their dead raised to life again, I recall about 10 years ago being driven to a hospital while doctors were trying to keep my cousin alive. His wife had called me as things took a turn for the absolute worse. He, a relatively young man, was dead by the time I got there. I sat next to her for a long time, and for a long time, there were no words between us. The disbelief and the grief shut our throats tight, we never really talked about those moments but everything I believed was challenged for a moment. Today, ten years later, she still grieves, but she has not lost faith.
Those whose faith has been tested could embrace what Peter wrote, “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ,” 1 Peter 1:6,7
My friend said to me yesterday that, as she was feeding her husband, she recognised that this is what the vows mean when we say for better or for worse. Better is great but the worse tests our faith and we are perfected.
Untested faith is no faith at all.
Think on these things:
- Have you ever been challenged by hardship, sickness, death?
- How have the challenges in your life affected your faith?
- What support systems are available in your church to help people whose faith is being severely tested by life?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that when we are tested we would hold on to the promises of God and not lose our faith.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex
